Day1, dead downwind, deadheads, and dolphins

Day 1 sailing from St Thomas to Key West on board sailing vessel Simpatica was not without excitement and new challenges. Simpatica is a 41 foot Jeaneau and for a guy who sails a beefy Aluminum cutter made to sail in the Antarctic and delivers mostly full keeled Island Packets she has taken a little getting used to. For example, as I speak the wind is blowing dead downwind at only about 8knots, in an Island Packet we would be motoring but this light little boat is actually sailing wing on wing at an average of 4.5knots. Being a delivery skipper I take pride in getting the boat to the destination as fast as I can, so why don’t I kick on the Iron Genny? These boats are not really meant for long ocean passages and so they don’t waste a lot of extra space for things like… fuel… she holds 37 gallons and we added another 40 in jerry jugs. Even with our fuel conservation we will have to stop in the Dominican Republic to fuel up.



Sailing dead downwind is a challenge by itself but Simpatica doesn’t have an autopilot so we get to hand steer the whole way. While sailing wing on wing has its advantages, (balanced helm and good boat speed) it takes a great deal of patience and concentration to keep her from Gybing. We have the boom prevented out but a full on gybe can still put enough pressure on the gear to damage something… it’s just better not to have an accidental gybe.



Deadheads… now some of you might be thinking we have run into a boatload of Grateful Dead fans in tie dye with long scraggly beards… I wish… they wouldn’t put a hole in the boat like the deadheads I am referring to. A deadhead is a huge log (tree actually) that floats straight up and down in the water… we have seen a few of them in the past 24 hours here on the North Coast of Puerto Rico along with any number of rather large logs and branches floating with birds perched on them. The danger of deadheads is that they are almost impossible to see and certainly are impossible to see at night. If you hit one just right while coming down from a rising wave you could hole a light boat like this… keeps us vigilant.



On a trip like this, especially in a boat that is unfamiliar to us we check the bilges regularly, usually only to find a little water in the bottom. Yesterday when we checked it the second time the bilge was full, the engine well was full, and the well by the packing gland was full. Nothing gets a sailors heart pounding like a new and significant influx of water in the bilge. Richard and I began pulling up floor boards and beds trying to track down the water. We pulled out a bucket and a kayak bilge pump to help get the water under control as the little bilge pump couldn’t keep up with it. My fear was that we had either hit a deadhead or the drippless packing gland was no longer dripless (not much you can do if those go out that’s one reason I still use flax packing on Wandering Dolphin.) Once the water was all pumped out we could tell that it was coming from somewhere aft of the engine… we had just filled the water tanks (located aft of the engine) before we left St Thomas, so I decided to taste the water to see if it was salt or fresh… to our relief it was fresh water. One of the tanks must have a leak high on the tank so when we heeled over it leaked into the bilge. It has since stopped so the leak must be above the water level in the tank now.



We went from near panic looking for a hole in the boat to laughing in the cockpit and fixing steak for dinner within about 30 minutes. That is actually pretty typical offshore. Things are either really great or really terrible with very little middle ground.



I have the 6:00am watch and within moments of taking the wheel from Richard a pod of spotted dolphins showed up and, as if to announce themselves, or maybe just say “hi” one of them jumped at least 8 feet out of the water and did a full back flip just for me. I have never seen anything like it outside of Sea World. They zipped up to the side of the boat like 8 or 10 torpedoes and proceeded to play in the bow wake for Richard.



It’s all quiet on the boat right now; Jimmy is at the helm on watch and Richard it playing with his iPad.



Hope Your Day is as Beautiful as Ours is Right Now,



Captain Tofer, Richard and Jimmy

Life raft is here so we are OFF!

Jimmy, Richard and I are setting sail for Key West this morning.  Keep an eye on the SPOT to see where we are.

If you would like to pop us off a free instant message to our Iridium phone follow this link:

http://messaging.iridium.com/ you leave the number 8816 that is already in the number slot and add our number to it 32521786 then just type in your message.  Don't bother putting your email in the email line as it just uses up the number of letters you can type. (160 total per message)  But you can send as many as you like and they are free.  When the beep goes off from the phone we all jump to see what it says...

I will.... once again try to blog... hopefully with my Ocens mail I can do it this time.

Sailing,
Captain Tofer, Jimmy and Richard onboard Simpatico

Waiting On a Liferaft

The boat we are supposed to deliver from St Thomas to Key West is ready to go. All of the provisions are stowed, the dingy is tied down on the foredeck, our personal stuff is in our space and the chartplotter, Iridium phone, and Spot are all set up and ready. The crew is about as psyched as they can get for hand steering over 1000 miles. The weather is even good to go… so… why are we still sitting at the dock?


The liferaft that was rented for us to take along is somewhere at customs.

This trip on this boat at this time of year = liferaft needed, so we wait… nothing ever happens the way it’s supposed to in the islands. Things are done in their own time and at their own pace… it sure is hard not to get anxious though, we need to get moving to beat the hurricane season.

I will keep you updated.

Captain Tofer

Iridium Woes

Iridium Phone and E-mail


Well jimmy and I are back from our first two deliveries. Both the trip from St Thomas to Norfolk and the one from Fort Lauderdale to New York went nearly perfect. The “Changin’ Tags” trip to Norfolk ended up in Beaufort, NC because of a cold front pushing off the coast keeping us from a trip around the cape. The Marinette delivery from Florida to New York was a race against similar cold fronts but once we pulled ahead of them we managed to stay in front (thanks to the XM weather feature on our Garmin chart plotter.) The only mishap was that on the second day out of Lauderdale I was thrown across the cabin by an obnoxious wave and landed on my laptop… crunch. On the trip to NY my friend Richard came along and it was great to have an extra hand and another guy to laugh with and talk about pretty much everything under the sun. “What do YOU think the world would be like if everyone died a horrible death from a manmade virus?” “How would YOU stop the oil from leaking into all of the worlds oceans?” “If were asked to go to Mars would you say yes?” Yeah those are just a few of the crazy topics that come up when you are alone to long with nothing but ocean to look at and nothing to do but read and listen to music.

It was my intention to blog at least every other day on those deliveries but… well lets have a little chat about Iridium. Iridium is a GREAT thing to have. It is amazing to me that I can call my wife from the middle of an ocean and talk with her like she’s right there. The free instant messages are the BEST! When the phone beeps I jump up and see what it says and it’s like I have been transported for a moment to her side. Just to know that everything is Ok with the family takes a load of worry off a sailors mind. But… the main reason we wanted the phone was to send and receive email. Iridium doesn’t tell you that the software they give you with the phone is USELESS… trust me it is… it is slooooooow and when you are paying $1.50 per minute a 3 minute download of simple emails is ridiculous! Even after that it shows the emails have been sent but they NEVER actually arrive. I sent out 3 or four blogs for Beck to load on this site and she never got one of them. The cost for those useless blogs that never made it almost $25.00.

But I have since found the solution. www.ocens.com Ocens is a company that makes an email and weather grib viewer to be used with Sat phones. The first thing they do when they walk you through the installation (yep a real person talks you through it and they don’t even charge you a crazy fee for the help) then they check it all with you and make sure it is functioning properly before they let you go. They even make a sailblogs quick blogger for the sat phone… of course I don’t use sailblogs much anymore… I may have to on long passages now though. The wonderful thing is… in less than 30 seconds I can now send and receive email and it actually makes it to its destination. In my opinion Ocens is the only way to go for offshore email using your Sat phone. Check it out!

Jimmy and Richard and I will be leaving on Sunday to deliver a sailboat from St Thomas to Key West. This boat doesn’t have a dodger or autopilot… I will try again with the blogs now that I can send emails. Hopefully you will get to share with us what is bound to be an interesting delivery.

Once we are under way Rebecca will post the link and number for you to send us free instant messages… we would love to hear from you and I will even try to answer any questions you send us on a following blog. Remember to hit the word SPOT on our blog to follow a link that shows you right where we are as we sail.

God Bless,
Captain Tofer

Leaving For Norfolk

Well the "Changin' Tags" delivery is getting underway a few days later than we expected.  When Dick and Jill went on their last little BVI cruise the auto pilot went out.  I, for one, am happy that if it was going to happen it happened BEFORE we set sail for Norfolk.  The auto pilot sure makes life a lot nicer on those long passages.  It is supposed to be fixed in the morning first thing and we will be able to head out imediatly after that.

I will be updating our position with SPOT if you would like to follow us and Rebecca will be posting the blogs I write on the way.  It makes my deliveries seem a little less lonely if I know that there are a few people reading as we go.

Sailing Soon,
Captain Tofer

Beck on Vacation and Deliveries Coming

Rebecca left on Thursday morning for a few days with her friend in Oklahoma.  It has been a few years  since she was able to get away by herself.  We are all missing her and can't wait for her to get home.

Jimmy and I leave on the first of 3 back to back deliveries on the 28th.  Our first one is on s/v "Changin Tags" we will be going with her owner Dick Shirley to Norfolk, VA.  I hope to have the Iridium sat phone up and sending emails so I can write a little blog every day letting you know what is happening on the 10 day offshore trip.  In the past we have had some pretty wild rides on "Changin Tags."  Last January we were in Gale Force winds for almost a week but she is a great boat (Island Packet 465) and Dick, Jimmy and I have been through some pretty rough stuff together so it is always a pleasure to sail on her.

We hope to arrive in Norfolk sometime around the 7th of May where we will grab a flight to Miami and try to get offshore on the 8th if possible.  S/V Marinette is an island Packet 445 that Jimmy and I have run up and down the coast a bunch of times.  She is a sweet ride and not afraid of the Gulf Stream.  Last year on the northbound trip we took her from Fort Lauderdale to New York in just seven days.  we hope to repeat that again this year so we can fly out of New York for St Thomas on the 16th of May.

Our next delivery will be leaving from St Thomas on the 17th or 18th of May and heading for Key West, Florida.  The boat is a Jeaneau 40 with no Auto Pilot and  a flat out down wind sail of 10 days... there was no way Jimmy and i could have hand steered that boat all the way to Florida but my friend Richard Cave (who owns the boat "Cave Dweller" which we just delivered to Trinidad) has agreed to come along for the sail.  That trip should be a great sail, downwind all the way, but as any sailor knows, steering a boat downwind requires vigilance and the reality is that most auto pilots can't handle the job as well as a human.

I will be blogging throughout these trips and using the little SPOT device so if you want to follow along and check out our progress over your coffee you can see what the life of a delivery skipper and crew is like offshore.  The SPOT word up under "Where Are We Now" will send you to a new page with the Google Map showing where we are at that time.  If you change it from Map to Satalite view you can even see what the depth of the water is where we are.  The spot point on there right now are the left over ones from our trip to Trinidad.  I will up date the blog and let you know what's up before we head out on the 28th.

God Bless,
Captain Tofer

Working Out The Details

As we are getting ready for this summers big push to Panama, through the canal, and on the long offshore passage to Hawaii.  There are a lot of little details we have to work out.

Charlie the dog:  Charlie was not an intended member of our crew.  We actually had to leave our beloved Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Griz, with our friends the Ewings when we moved on the boat.  This was one of the hardest sacrifices our family had to make when we moved on the boat but we knew that Griz was too old and too big to get on and off the boat every day.  When we were in Charleston some friends of ours had bought this cute little Bichon Frise puppy for their Mom for Christmas and the Dad said "NO WAY!" so we rescued the little guy who was also sick as a ...mmm.. dog at the time.  We named the cute little ball of fur Charlie, after Charleston, and after a bumpy start with the Captain ( he chewed as a puppy... jib halyards, boat shoes, docklines which were still attached to the dock) he learned how to behave like a true salty dog and has been a lovable addition to our crew and family.  Charlie lives on the boat and rarely goes ashore.  He uses a box on the deck for natures call and considers himself the Security Officer onboard.  He gets sea sick on every passage but has never abandoned ship at the end.  When we decided (spontaniously) to take on a dog on the boat we really didn't do our homework.  There are a lot of places you simply cannot go if you have a dog.  Hawaii is almost one of those.  Hawaii has NO rabies and they, with good reason, are not taking any chances.  To bring a dog to Hawaii one must go through quite a procedure.  The list is about 5 pages long and costs aboput $300.00 we will also not be allowed to stop in Hilo on arrival but have to continue on to Oahu because of the dog.  You may think the extra 12 hours or so of sailing is no big deal at the end of a 4800 mile passage but I assure you... IT IS A HUGE DEAL.  Charlie is now a member of our crew and our trip will not happen without him so... we do what we have to do.  If you are considering taking a pet crusing with you.... think long and hard about it and do your homework.

Iridium Phone:  When we bought the boat in 2003 I purchased an Iridium sat phone.  While it was one of the best safety purchases I have ever made it is VERY expensive, both at the initial outset to buy the phone and to keep minutes on the SIM card.  When I bought our phone the company had just come out with the next generation phone, the difference in the price of the new phone or the price of a new/old version was about $300.00 so I bought the old phone (9500) and now I am regretting it.  The technology has changed so much in  the past seven years that my older phone needs a software upgrade that the phones internal memory cannot handle in order to connect for data calls.  It still works fine for voice but messaging and data are out and that is what we primarily use our phone for.  Iridium also has a feature that allows short text messages to be sent to the phone for free... we use this feature to recieve weather reports and short messages from home.  So we have to get a new Iridium phone and are faced with the same exact problem... do we buy the newest phone (9555) which has a direct USB connect for e-mail and data or the last model (9505a) which works but may not be usable in a few years.  the difference again is around $300 to $400.  Oh and if anyone reading this wants an older Iridium phone I will sell you one cheap hahaha.

EPIRB:  Our Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon is from 1997 so when I took it in for servicing I was prepared to have them say that we would need a new one.  These little units are about $1500.00 but no offshore sailor should leave home without one.  In my opinion they are even more important than a life raft.  The good folks at ACR who manufactured our beacon are not just out to make a buck though.  They truly want to use technology to save lives and they do.  The deal they have is that if you bring in your old beacon for servicing and it does not measure up with a new battery and servicing they will buy it back from you by giving you a new comperable version of the beacon for half price.  When I left the beacon to be serviced I was again prepared for them to say... "No good, get a new one buddy."  Instead, they replaced the battery and serviced it and it passed all of the checks with flying colors and my beacon is just like new for about $400.00 DON'T throw away and old beacon if you have one onboard!

SPOT:  Spot is a niffty little gadget we just picked up.  It's a pretty simple little GPS unit that sends out your position and anyone with the link can track your position on the web using Google Maps.  It is relativly inexpensive (the new ones SPOT2 are around $140.00 and the older ones are around $100.00 + $99.00 per year for service) The SPOT you to manually send out your position report (the SPOT 2 also has a tracking feature that does an automatic tracking for 24 hours).  They also have preprogramed messages that can be sent out to people you have put on your contacts.  If a cruiser has a SPOT and an Iridium phone you can send out your position report for free and recieve the weather report from your weather guy for free as well.  Will this mean that we actually only do email every other day or so on a long passage?  I am not sure only time will tell.  But it certainly adds one more measure of safety in the case of an emergency. 

Click on the little SPOT word under the "Where are we Now" link on the side and it will send you right to a little google map with our current position.  I will be testing out the spot on my coming deliveries so follow along if you would like.

God Bless,
Captain Tofer